I wanted to point out the anti-Catholic stance that your reporting tookwhen discussing the report from the Vatican about the number of Muslimssurpassing the number of Catholics. Your joking mis-described Pope BenedictXVI's address at Regensberg last year and suggested that Catholics shouldn't be making inflammatory statements to Muslims. This was an extremely insensitive comment,particularly in light of threats made against the Pope recently, following the murder of Archbishop Paolos Faraj Rahho, the head of the Chaldean Catholic church in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. I like your show, but this sort of insensitive anti-Catholic commentary has no place in a serious conversation. I expect better than that from public radio. There are plenty of talk radio hosts that purvey hate speech, NPR aims higher. In a world where Catholics are killed in the streets for their faith, you should be more thoughtful in how you express youropinions.

Sent by Kevin Lee | 12:31 PM | 3-31-2008

Dear Kevin Lee,

I hate to break this to you, but this anti-Catholicism is pretty much par for the course for NPR. As the old saying goes, "Anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism of the Left," and the BPP, along with the rest of NPR, lives out that saying "con much gusto."

When Muslims murder an Italian nun in Somalia, murder a Chaldean priest at his parish and booby-trap his body so as to blow up his parishioners, we Catholics are told by NPR that we just don't have enough "understanding of Islam." This all stems from the Pope QUOTING an eleventh-century Byzantine emperor. We don't even know what His Holiness' opinion was of that quote, other than faith cannot sustain itself without reason.

If this is how the "religion of peace" responds to the Pope QUOTING a criticism of Islam, Goddess helps us what "misunderstanding of Islam" we'd face if the Pope actually criticized Islam for himself.

One other possible reason that Islam has passed Catholicism is that Islamic countries rarely practice freedom of religion. It's bad enough that the Quran subjugates Christians and Jews to second-class citizenship by imposing a tax upon them, a tax which Muslims don't have to pay, and by forbidding Christians and Jews from evangelizing. What's worse is that most Muslim countries don't even show them that level of respect by imprisoning any Christian or Jew who publically practices their faiths and executing any Muslim who converts to either Christianity or Judaism. And the Left has the nerve to criticize the Inquisition. The modern-day "religion of peace" can run water-boarding circles around Torquemada.

Sent by Matthew Scallon | 2:33 PM | 3-31-2008

Dear Wesley,

Not according to Act 2. On the day of Pentecost, the Church increased its number from some 700 (according to some calculations) to 50,000. The Church accomplished this multiplication because of a knowledge of Christ's mission and an evangelistic fervor, two things sadly lacking in the average American Catholic.

As for the Church's stance on birth control, not to repeat myself too often --I discussed this in an earlier blog-- the Catholic Church does not oppose birth control. She, like all Protestant churches before 1920, opposes artificial contraception. While periodic abstinance, aiding by increased scientific knowledge of women's furtility, can be used to lessen the chances of conception, artificial methods cannot be used. There are many reasons why. Scripture mentions two methods of artificial contraception and condemns both. Artificial contraception, unlike natural family planning, puts more of the burden of controlling fertility on the woman in the relationship than on the man. Finally, when artificial contraception fails --and all methods of birth control fail at one time or another-- artificial contraception tempts the mother into having an abortion, since she and her partner are already operating from the mind-set that pregnancy is a disease and not a blessing.

So, fear not, Paul VI's "Humanae Vitae" is still the difinitive word on the Church's "anti-birth control" stance, for now. Perhaps, you should read it before you criticize the Church any further.

Sent by Matthew Scallon | 3:14 PM | 3-31-2008

Amen, Matthew Scallon. One hopes that an intelligent listening ppublic can see this as a serious issue that handicaps their legitimate efforts to provide informed, listener supported programing. I hope that Catholics will consider this sort of reporting at pledge time.

Sent by Kevin Lee | 6:59 PM | 3-31-2008

Magics not real. To all of you that believe in anything beside the solid reality, get real. Life is an SAT not an ACT, intelligence is in answering correctly and living as correct as you can, not simply attempting to answer every question you dont know with an extremely uneducated guess. The universe is mass, and thats the only fact you people seem to realize to I'll use that. We're one of no less than 4x10 to the 24th planets. 4000000000000000000000000 how egocentric as you people. You watch a show on someones love for animals and livestock as you feast away. You're a bunch of hypocrits and plebians, and your faiths you kill over have been here for 4000 of the 13.7 billion years of the universe. Quit the Fairly Tale worship.